The invention relates to the field of communications, and more particularly to the remote management of call center facilities using mobile transceivers.
Call center facilities and services represent a multibillion dollar industry in the United States. Call centers are deployed by companies, government agencies and other organizations to field random incoming telephone calls for customer care, sales, emergency medical or other services, and to generate outbound calls. Call centers are equipped with telephone hardware similar to a private branch exchange (PBX) or a central office (CO)-based Centrex facility. Call centers receive calls through (800) numbers, network-enabled telephony ports and other channels, and may distribute automatically dialed outbound calls to customers or other recipients. These centers are staffed with teams of individual agents sitting at telephone-equipped workstations, often with computer displays, to service that traffic. Commercial call center architectures include the Nortel Networks Meridian(trademark) 1 system, DMS-100 Centrex(trademark) and others.
In many installations, call centers are managed according to real-time statistics and other information generated by the call center hardware. That data indicates the flow of telephone traffic through the facility and the status of the call center""s resources in several categories. The families of information generally relate to statistics for queue operation, agent deployment by skill set, agent performance, and system operations. That information may include data such as the number and categories of agents, the average call wait time, the oldest call currently waiting, queue depth, skillset availability, service level, service quality, the average speed of answer, the number of calls abandoned before servicing by agents, the number of calls abandoned after servicing by agents, agent work schedule adherence, the total number of pending calls, calls by skill group, and other information.
This suite of frequently updated information indicates to one or more call center supervisors how promptly, accurately and efficiently services are being delivered. This information is typically presented on computer displays at the supervisor""s desk or in the form of printed reports. In many large call center operations, these statistics may be flashed on an LED or other display, sometimes called a wallboard, in full view of the operation room.
However, the use of electronic wallboard displays to track and manage call center operations has drawbacks. One is that the call center supervisor must be located in the same room as the agent workstations to see the runtime information. Further, the information displayed may be of a general nature for the entire call center, not specific to the supervisor""s needs.
Some commercial systems have been developed, such as the Symon 2000(trademark) system, which flash call center operations statistics on a computer display to computer-equipped supervisors and agents. This approach, however, has the disadvantage that the call center supervisor must be seated at a computer workstation, logged in and authorized to view the instantaneous updates as they occur. Moreover the categories of data to be displayed must be programmed beforehand in conventional computer as well as wallboard designs, so that timely adjustment of the types of information presented to the supervisor is not possible.
Other commercial call center equipment includes some type of wireless paging service, capable of transmitting call center statistics to the call center supervisor on an alphanumeric pager or other device. While this gives the call center supervisor the benefit of mobility, this method provides only periodic updates of information, typically associated with exception conditions rather than steady real-time or near real-time reports. No existing implementations allow the call center supervisor to continuously view the operation and then upload changes to the call center system, such as commands for reassignment of agents, setting up overflow queues and other management controls. More flexible and powerful call center technology is desirable.
The invention overcoming these and other problems in the art relates to a system and method for remote management of call center operations which employs a full duplex link from a mobile transceiver to the call center server or other hardware. According to the invention a call center supervisor may roam freely within a facility, surrounding building, campus, city or across the country or internationally depending on the type of transceiver employed, but with the ability to monitor the status of and communicate commands back to the call center system using the transceiver.
In one embodiment, the call center supervisor may use a wireless network-enabled personal digital assistant (PDA) device as a transceiver to view data on the wireless link and deliver input on the uplink to a call center server. The turnaround time for making adjustments to the call center operation is therefore reduced, and the call center supervisor can oversee the facility in a more responsive and flexible manner.